Exploring the interface

Alright, before we can explore the powerful features of WordPerfect, we need to launch the application.That's what we are going to do right now and you can see here on my desktop, I have icons or shortcutsto the various applications in the WordPerfect Office Suite X4.We have got WordPerfect up here, Presentations, there is Quattro Pro, WordPerfect MAILand look at that, we have got Lightning down at the bottom.Now unless you have made some changes to your default installation, you will see these icons on your desktop.If you have chosen to modify the installation so that you don't have shortcuts on your desktop,then you will need to launch the application through your Start button here on Windows Vista.

You can see down the bottom left hand corner when I click my Start button,I don't actually see all of my icons here in my Recently Used list.So the easiest way to find WordPerfect is down here where my cursor is flashing in the Start Search field isto type WordPerfect or at least the beginnings of WordPerfect.I have typed in 'wordperf.'You can see up the top here I have got Lightning, WordPerfect Mail, there is a User Guide there.There is WordPerfect X4 so I will give that a click and that will launch my application.

Now the very first thing that you are going to seewhen you launch WordPerfect is something called the Workspace Selection Screen.Now Corel wants users to feel comfortable in any environment that they are familiar with, but at the same time,enjoy the powerful features of WordPerfect so you will see we have got different modes to choose from here.WordPerfect Mode is the default.So if I just click Ok at this point, I am going to see what I see in the background here, my typical WordPerfect user interface.However, if I am a Word user, an experienced Word user switching over to WordPerfect or I have been asked to use this applicationwhere I work for example, I might want to switch to Microsoft Word Mode where I will still have the powerful featuresof WordPerfect, but in an environment that's more familiar to me as a Word user.

Now some people will like the old versions of WordPerfect.They memorize the keystrokes they are familiar with, that blue screen and plain old text on top of it.If you are comfortable in that environment and you want to keep that environment, you still can.WordPerfect Classic Mode, version 5.1, is an old DOS version.So you will still have all of those new features and powerful features in WordPerfect, but from the DOS environment.If you are in the legal industry, then choosing WordPerfect Legal Mode againgives you all of the functionality of this latest version of WordPerfect.

But you will see an environment, a user interface that gives you quick and easy accessto all of the legal tools built in to WordPerfect.Another option before we click OK is down here on the bottom left hand corner.If you don't want this showing up at the startup every time you launch WordPerfect you can deselect the checkbox,I am going to do that.My default mode that I like to work in is WordPerfect Mode so I am going to leave it set at WordPerfect Mode.I don't need to see this every time I launch WordPerfect.I will deselect the checkbox and click OK.So here I am in WordPerfect X4.

So we are going to do a quick tour of the user interface to get you familiar in your surroundings,not a lot of changes here actually in this latest version of WordPerfect.So if you are an experienced WordPerfect user, this is going to look very familiar.Up at the very top we have got our title bar.Up here is where you see the name of the application you are using just in case you forgot, WordPerfect X4,but you will also see some other information up here.The name of your document and even more important is this little word here, unmodified.

Now currently, we have a New Blank Document by default.We haven't entered any text, made any modifications; we haven't saved this and given in our name.That's why we see by default, Document1 up here and in round brackets here the word unmodified is your cluethat there is nothing for you to save at this point.As soon as we make a change for example, if I start to type my name you can seethat the word unmodified has disappeared indicating modifications have been made to this documentand I need to save them before I close this out.

I like that up there.That's on our title bar.Over here in the far right hand corner of the title bar, we have our Minimize, our Restore Downand our Close buttons as well to close the entire application.Now right below the title bar is our Menu bar just like always, starting with File and ending with Help.The Menu bar will contain all of the commands available to you in WordPerfect.So when I click on File for example, you will see file related commandslike creating New files, New from Project, New XML Documents.

Look at this, we can Open, Open PDF files, Close, Save, all of these are file commands.You will also see keyboard shortcuts over here like Save for example,Ctrl+S on your keyboard is the shortcut for saving on the fly, I like that.It's kind of like our easy way to update your work as you are working on it.Now down below, you will see some of these options actually have little triangles next to them,arrows pointing to the right indicating that there are sub-menu items to choose from.So here under Document for example, I have got Compare, Remove Markings, Redline etcetera.

All of these are document commands.Down below, you will see Send To for example as well where I can send to the Desktop or a Fax or a Mail Recipient, kind of neat.You will also see the name of your most recently used files down here.So you can quickly go back to them if you need to and right at the bottom of this menu is Exit.Here is where we can exit the application.You will see that under Edit, we have got edit commands, we have got View commands.Under View, you will see some of the options that are currently selected by checkmarksand this little bullet next to Page, this is our current view.

These are the Toolbars that are currently being viewed on our screen by defaultand we can change those easily right here from the View menu.I have got an Insert menu.Here is all our Formatting commands, Table commands.You will notice sometimes that commands are not selectable, that's because in this case, we don't have a table to Format.We don't have anything to Insert or Delete in a table at this point.Under Tools, you will see a number of tools available to you in WordPerfect including these ones up herethat are used quite often, the Spell Checker, the Grammar Checker, Thesaurus, Dictionary and so on.

Under Window, if you have got multiple documents open at one time you will see them listed here at the bottom,but you also have options for displaying those documents either next to each other,on top of each other using Cascade and of course, at the end is our Help menu.Notice that Help Topics F1 is your shortcut key.So I am going to click down here in my document to not select from the menu.Right below the menu bar is a group of buttons in what we call our Standard Toolbarand here on this toolbar we have got a number of more frequently used commands.

Now of course, you can change your toolbars, you can manipulate what's on and what's offand you can even choose what's going to appear on a toolbar and what will not.But this is the default here and you can see they are kind of grouped together.This first group includes buttons for creating New Blank Documents, opening, saving, there is our Publish to PDF button.We have got a Mail button and a Print button.All of these would be found under the File menu.So they are shortcuts.We have got some Edit commands grouped together here like Cut, Copy and Paste.There is Undo and we have also got a Redo button.

We have got some formatting options for QuickFormat, drawing pictures, Clipart and so on.Then you can see over here we have got Numbering and Bullets and Columns.They are grouped together so that they are easy to remember where to find them and of course, as you hover over buttons,you get to see a little bit of information about the button.For example, as I hover over this asterisk, it's the PerfectExpert.So down below that we have got, my favorite bar, the context sensitive property bar.It's context sensitive because you will see these buttons change depending on your environment, what you are working on.

Right now we are just typing some regular old text so we see things like our shortcuts to choose, or Font Face the Font Sizeand font appearance like Bold, Italics and Underlining.We have got Justification buttons and so on.So all of these buttons apply to working with text.Now if I had a table here on my page for example, I would see different buttons up here, a bunch of Table commands would showup in this context sensitive property bar giving you the tools you need exactly when you need them.Just below the property bar we have got our Ruler on by default.

You can see I have got little triangles here every half an inch representing the tab stops so using the ruler I can see alignmentin my document but I can also use the ruler to set tab stops and change tab stopsand when you are working with tabs, this is very important.Now down below at the very bottom you can see I have got Document1 showing up down here as well,not just at the top in my title bar but down at the bottom on our application bar.If you have got multiple documents open and they are not tiled or cascaded one over the other, this is a quickand easy way to switch from one document to another.

Just click on it down here.We only have the one document open right now called Document1 because we haven't saved it yet,but there are some other buttons down here, little shortcut buttons.Here is our Signature button, the Shadow Cursor.We can turn it on and off from here.You may have noticed, when I moved my mouse pointer around the empty page there is a little shadow following me and when I moveto the center, it changes a little bit. When I move over to the right side, it changes again.This is a quick and easy way to just click and type.If I want to start typing right here, I can just click here.I don't have to hit a bunch of Returns and so on.

Shadow Cursor can be handy, but you may not want to use it in coming down here in your applicationbar you can turn it off just by clicking on it.We have also got shortcuts down here for turning our Caps on and off, there is a Printer button.Down here at Count, you will see your word count.As we hover over this and start typing in our document and save our changes we will see the number of words in our document.You will also see the current mode which is the Insert Mode.Insert versus Typeover are two options you have when you are entering text.

So as I start typing in an existing document, I am not going to type over what's there.It's actually going to insert my new text, pushing all the other text around and that's because I am in Insert Mode by default.But I can come down here to change it to Typeover and now if I was to click in front of my name here and type my last name,I am actually going to type over the word David.That's Typeover Mode as opposed to Insert Mode.I will switch it back to Insert, click in front of Rivers.This time when I type my first name, notice that it's inserting and pushing all the other text off to the right.

Also, down here in the bottom right corner it has been there forever.You are going to see your combined position, that's where your cursor is in your document.If I click at the end of my name here, you can see that's on the first page on the first lineand the position on the ruler is actually, 1.88 inches across.That's where my cursor is flashing right now.So you always have a good idea what page you are on.If you have got a long document, that can come in very handy and I like usingthat just to get a feel for where I am in my document.Now we have also got our scrollbar over here on the right hand side.

We have room for one down at the bottom.There is no horizontal scrollbar because we can see the full width of our document, but if we zoom inor if we have got a very wide page, maybe we are working on a legal size piece of paper, a landscape,then we might need that scrollbar down at the bottom to move left or right.In this case, we are using Portrait, which is an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper,and I need a scrollbar here on the right hand side to scroll vertically upand down to see the entire page at my current zoom level.

My current zoom level by default is just 100%, actual size.Now down at the bottom of the scrollbar, we have got our Browse by buttons which is kind of neat because we can quickly browsethrough long documents by page. So as I click these buttons, I am going to move from page to page,the Previous page or the Next page, but I can change that.If I have got a long document with many tables in it, I can click the button right in between those arrows, I can choose Tableand now every time I click the arrow buttons, I will move from table to table.

To the Next table or the Previous table in my document.I am going to change that back to Page, but you can see there are lots of options, if you want to move through your Graphics,Text boxes, Comments, Headings and there is Page right at the top, the default.So that's your user interface.You should now be feeling quite comfortable with your surroundings here in this latest version of WordPerfect.

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Released

4/16/2008

Corel WordPerfect Office X4 has the potential to take on nearly every business challenge, and instructor David Rivers shows how to do just that in Getting Started with WordPerfect Office X4. He covers everything from interface basics to professional presentations, and along the way teaches how to format document elements, generate PDFs, make creative spreadsheets in Quattro Pro, and more. David also delves into some of the software's secret powers. Exercise files accompany the course.